s and spreads itself
in the furrow far better than any mechanical drill could do it. The
secret of gardening is to stick to nature's old appointed ways. Then we
read a chapter of Bernard Shaw aloud, by candle light or lantern light.
As soon as they hear the voice of Shaw all the vegetables dig
themselves in. This saves going all along the rows with a shingle to
pat down the topsoil or the humus or the magnesia bottles or whatever
else is uppermost.

Fred says that certain vegetables--kohl-rabi and colanders, we
think--extract nitrogen from the air and give it back to the soil. It
may be so, but what has that to do with us? If our soil can't keep
itself supplied with nitrogen, that's its lookout. We don't need the
nitrogen in the air. The baby isn't old enough to have warts yet.

[Illustration]

Hank says it's no use watering the garden from above. He says that
watering from above lures the roots toward the surface and next day the
hot sun kills them. The answer to that is that the rain comes from
above, doesn't it? Roots have learned certain habits in the past million
years and we haven't time to teach them to duck when it rains. Hank has
some irrigation plan which involves sinking tomato cans in the ground
and filling them with water.

Bill says it's dangerous to put arsenic on the plants, because it may
kill the cook. He says nicotine or tobacco dust is far better. The
answer to that is that we never put fertilizers on our garden, anyway.
If we want to kill the cook there is a more direct method, and we
reserve the tobacco for ourself. No cutworm shall get a blighty one from
our cherished baccy pouch.

Fred says we ought to have a wheel-barrow; Hank swears by a mulching
iron; Bill is all for cold frames. All three say that hellebore is the
best thing for sucking insects. We echo the expletive, with a different
application.

You see, we have no instinct for gardening. Some fellows, like Bill
Stites, have a divinely implanted zest for the propagation of chard and
rhubarb and self-blanching celery and kohl-rabi; they are kohl-rabid, we
might say. They know, just what to do when they see a weed; they can
assassinate a weevil by just looking at it. But weevils and cabbage
worms are unterrified by us. We can't tell a weed from a young onion. We
never mulched anything in our life; we wouldn't know how to begin.

But the deuce of it is, public opinion says that we must raise a garden.
It is no use to hire a man to do